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New Year’s resolutions in the works? Small steps are best
Los Angeles Times: So, you've made a New Year's resolution to get healthy. No doubt you've banished all cookies and chips from the house and plan to hit the gym every single day. Let's get real. In three months, you're going to be comatose on the sofa with a telltale ring of orange Cheetos crumbs around your mouth. Most people start off the new year by making grand, sweeping changes — and the changes never stick. What does stick? Thinking small: setting modest, attainable goals and slowly chalking up petite successes as you steadily build confidence. It's a strategy that can lead to substantial and sustainable health improvements over time, as fitness and nutrition experts well know.
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Pria Sering Keliru Membaca Isyarat Seksual Wanita
metrotvnews: Pria ternyata sering mengalami kesulitan untuk bisa secara tepat membaca minat wanita terhadap dirinya, ungkap penelitian terbaru. Tipe pria tertentu cenderung berpikir semua wanita menginginkan dirinya sedangkan pria lain tak mampu melihat isyarat wanita yang menginginkan dia. Seperti dikutip dari health.com, penelitian itu menyertakan 96 mahasiswa dan 103 mahasiswi yang ambil bagian dalam "pertemuan singkat". Mereka melakukan percakapan selama tiga menit kepada lima lawan jenis mereka. Sebelum latihan itu, para partisipan menilai daya tarik mereka sendiri dan tingkat hasrat hubungan seksual jangka pendek.
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Willpower’s secret weapon? Sugar
The Globe and Mail: If you’ve adopted some challenging New Year’s resolutions, a spot of sugar may be just the thing to keep you on track. Yes, even you dieters. Social psychologist Roy Baumeister of Florida State University shared the unusual tip in his recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Willpower, it turns out, is a mental resource that becomes depleted through the day. In the case of dieting, a calorie-counter may find it easy to avoid fattening foods in the morning, but after a day of tough choices, it’s increasingly likely that she will break down and reach for forbidden foods by bedtime.
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Why Placebos Work Wonders
The Wall Street Journal: Say "placebo effect" and most people think of the boost they may get from a sugar pill simply because they believe it will work. But more and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos. A particular mind-set or belief about one's body or health may lead to improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision, several recent studies have found, highlighting how fundamentally the mind and body are connected. It doesn't seem to matter whether people know they are getting a placebo and not a "real" treatment.
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Infants Possess Intermingled Senses
Scientific American: What if every visit to the museum was the equivalent of spending time at the philharmonic? For painter Wassily Kandinsky, that was the experience of painting: colors triggered sounds. Now a study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that we are all born synesthetes like Kandinsky, with senses so joined that stimulating one reliably stimulates another. The work, published in the August issue of Psychological Science, has become the first experimental confirmation of the infant-synesthesia hypothesis—which has existed, unproved, for almost 20 years. Read the full story: Scientific American
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How Kim Jong Un’s looks may help him rule
msnbc: Photographs show he has his grandfather’s double chin and dark eyebrows, and his haircut supposedly is a throwback to the older man’s style in the 1940s. Some reports speculate that Kim Jong Un has even undergone plastic surgery to make him look more like his popular grandfather, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, and less like his father, Kim Jong Il, who was not as well-liked.
